1. Repeal the gas tax for the summer, and pay for the repeal by cutting domestic discretionary spending

Stupid and bad. Every economist says this is at best just a stupid idea, at worst a very very bad idea that will end up helping the oil companies.

2. Redirect the oil being put into the national petroleum reserve onto the open market.

Stupid and unhelpful. Really, a couple cents a gallon? A short term fix? This does nothing.

3. Introduce a “more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security bill” as a replacement for the Warner-Lieberman “tax and trade” bill

I also want to introduce a “more ponies at lower cost with more rainbows and greater national security bill.” What does this even mean?

4. Establish an earmark moratorium for one year and pledge to uphold the presidential veto of bills with earmarks through the end of 2009.

Ahhh the great McCain Earmark Gambit, that keeps slowly getting rolled back as he is challenged on exactly what earmarks he’d stop with a complete moratorium.

5. Overhaul the census and cut its budget radically.

Right. because the Census is a HUGE part of our budget. Man, if only we could radically cut the census we could get that new Ponies and Rainbows bill funded!!!

6. Implement a space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system.

Weeeee!!! Space!!! Sounds great, but want to hear an expert’s take on this.  Also, like #5, really how significant is this in the scope of the entire budget? Mor ethan likely a drop in the bucket.

7. Declare English the official language of government.

Ahhh Newt, you just gotta pander to the “They Took Our Jeeerrrrrrrrrbs” crowd, eh? Is this really an issue that will save the GOP when the economy, the war and health care are the top issues? Really?

Here comes the Pander Bear!!!

8. Protect the workers’ right to a secret ballot. The vast majority (around 81%) of Americans believe that American workers have a right to have a secret ballot election before they are forced to join a union.

Ahhhh but a significant minority of Americans are in a job with unions, so looking at a poll of all Americans about the right to unionize is like asking all Americans about a ballot initiative in Alaska. It doesn’t really matter.

I got you a Cherry Picker, Newt. I hope you like it

9. Remind Americans that judges matter.

We’ve heard this one for years. It’s really helping now, eh? Pandering to little wedge issues won’t save you now.

——–

Well, that was fun.

• Lake county still has more to report, there are a couple precincts left in Marion and Monroe counties as well. FiveThirtyEight is projecting a Hillary win by 0.9% as of the latest update on the thread there. I was thinking 5% and 2-3 delegate win for Hillary so I will be thrilled by this.
• I’m predicting, based on nothing at all, a 1.5%, 1 delegate Hillary win. Maybe 2 delegates depending on how the CDs break down. Again, I’m thrilled with this considering that Obama kicked her ass in North Carolina and the end result is making up the popular vote ground from Pennsylvania and gaining even more ground in the pledged delegates (which, dear CNN, is what is really important)
• CNN needs to quit with the Lake County conspiracy mongering. I learned from a former state election director that Lake County is one of the counties that uses a consolidated county ballot counting system, rather than the precinct-by-precinct system used in most counties (and in Marion county). This, combined with the large number of absentee ballots (11,000+) is causing the late returns. not some anti-Hillary conspiracy.
• Sadly but not surprisingly, David Orentlicher did not win his bid for the nomination in the 7th CD. David O. would have instantly become one of the smartest congressmen in the country and a great progressive voice. I hope he gets back into the political ring soon (maybe run for Mayor if Indianapolis against Mayor Chinatowns in 2011? I would pay an admission fee to see a debate between those two).
• No one seems to be mentioning the insanely close race for the Democratic nominee to take on Governor Mitch “Mitchy Rich” Daniels. Jim Schellinger is the party approved, powers that be candidate. Jill Long Thompson is the ‘outsider.’ Currently (as of the latest results on wthr.com at 12:56am) Schellinger is up by 609 votes with 4967 of 5230 precincts reporting. So since when is the party approved, Dan Parker/Evan Bayh approved candidate eeking out a potential narrow victory an upset? When your state party chairman is the inept Evan Bayh toadie Dan Parker who can only get Schellinger’s name ID up to 50% in the weeks before the election. As much as I hate to agree with Bayh/Parker on anything, I hope Schellinger pulls this off. If I want to vote for a candidate who will pander with ridiculous gas tax holidays and engage in property tax demagoguery I’ll vote for a Republican.
• If anything came of tonight’s result in Indiana, its that Evan Bayh’s endorsement means very little when it comes to Obama vs. Hillary and that he will not get tapped as the VP. If Bayh can only deliver a tiny victory that is essentially a tie, he’s not the force among state Democrats that has been assumed by some. I am not shedding any tears over this.
• (as of 99.49% of Marion County precincts reporting) And finally, turnout was insane. 35.32% turnout of all registered voters in Marion County. Unfortunately the Indygov.org website does not list registered voters by party, but the GOP only got 45,667 ballots cast to the Dems’ 182,252. Turnout among Democrats HAS to have been well above the 50% of registered voters mark. This is awesome news for November.
• Finally finally, thanks to everyone who came out to Drinking Liberally. We had a really good crowd and it was a great time. Thanks also to Spencer and Dustin, who always treat us great at Spencer’s Stadium Tavern (802 S. West Street. Stop in and have a few beers. it’s a fantastic place)

Update:

• Looks like JLT pulled it out with the same white votes that came in for Hillary from Crown Point and such. As a friend of a friend said: “I blame Crown Point”.  JLT will get trounced by Daniels. There goes that opportunity. Heckuva job, Dan Parker.
• I still haven’t seen the delegate counts out of Indiana. Nothing official anyway. This is what matters, not the popular vote.  Will update here when I see it.
• Chris Bowers has the quote of the night:

So, please correct me if I am missing something, but if a shift of 4-5% and two or three delegates in Indiana and North Carolina is enough to end the Democratic nomination, then why didn’t anyone frakking tell us that the campaign was so close to ending? Why was there this massive kabuki theater pretending that it was still a close campaign where Clinton had a legitimate chance at winning? Why were Clinton’s attacks on Obama repeated again, and again, and again, without anyone mentioning that Clinton was a desperate candidate hanging by a thread who would probably say anything in order to stay afloat?

The reason is simple: the established media was never covering the Democratic nomination campaign. They were, instead, covering some form of kabuki theater where reality is ignored and liberals are ritually gutted on the public stage for the pleasure of elite, rich, white, male pundits who like to pretend they know what is in the mind of the “common man” or some other formulation that is equally rustic, offensive and laughable. That is all that we have been watching since the Wisconsin primary, since the delegates have not improved for Clinton since the Wisconsin primary (and have actually gotten much worse, if you include the supers). If we had been watching something else, then tonight would not be the end of the campaign, because nothing really changed tonight. If this is the end, then the last two and a half months have been a Clinton-fueled fairy tale, which is basically a white-hot lie about the nomination campaign. Puns intended in the previous sentence.

• Kim Brown won a Judge slot due to her name being at the top alphabetically, even though she wasn’t a slated candidate and most people don’t even pay attention to the judges anyway. Swell.

Mayor Chinatowns is going to import low wage Chinese workers to build our light rail system, then put them into an area of the city so that we can have our very own Chinatowns!! Two birds, one stone bitches! Now thems The Ballard Rules!

Photos From Teh Futar!!

Photo Circa 2010: Chinese workers build the light rail line in Indianapolis.

Photo Circa 2017: Indianapolis Chinatowns, Morris & West Streets

(In all seriousness, I really do hope he is behind light and regional rail for Indianapolis. We need it badly. And thanks to Nick for the rail-chinatown connection)

American Flag Lapel Pin is patriotism you can count on!!!

LapelPin08.com is the home of the most patriotic candidate in the race for the White House.

I’ll let Masson sum it up on a more coherent manner than I can:

I didn’t watch the ABC Debate. I hear the moderators were awful. The following topics apparently did not figure prominently:

The financial crisis
The collapse of housing values in the US and around the world
Afghanistan
Health care
Torture
The declining value of the US Dollar
Education
Trade
Pakistan
Energy
Immigration
The decline of American manufacturing
The Supreme Court
The burgeoning world food crisis.
Global warming
China
The attacks on organized labor and the working class
Terrorism and al Qaeda
Civil liberties and constraints on government surveillance

Flag pins, on the other hand, were deemed significant. Our media is just truly, truly horrible.

Our bullshit media is ruining this country. To steal a line from CJ, if you truly think that the question of a candidate wearing a lapel pin is more important than god damned policy you don’t deserve to vote.

More debate dumb-assery summaries:

• Charlie Gibson’s Cocktail Napkin Economics [Wonk Room]
  
• I just complained to ABC [Sadly, No!]
• Lee Atwater Lives!!! [dailyKos: DHinMI]
• Clinton-Obama Debate: ABC Decides Top Issues Facing Americans Are Gaffes, Flag Pins and ’60s Radicals [Editor & Publisher]
• Gibson, Stephanapoulos outrage! [Philly.com]

That’s all I can write or even stand to read at this point before I have a stroke and/or get really stabbity.

When I saw a video of Hillary Clinton downing a shot of Crown Royal whiskey in Bronko’s Restaurant and Lounge in Crown Point, Ind., on Saturday night, I was delighted to see that she has finally learned what campaigning for president is all about.

Some potential ideas for Drinking Games to decide our president:

• Quarters: Hey there’s a president on the quarter. It seems perfect but will it resonate with the Real Americans or just college frat boys?
• Beer Pong: Ditto, but this is something I could see making Spike TV into our election coverage leader.
• Speed Drinking: This could be especially important in the primary as the last World Record Holder (before the category being dropped from the Guinness Book) was from Pennsylvania. Have Steven Petrosino officiate.
• SOTU Drinking Game: Candidates are forced to watch all of George W. Bush’s SOTU speeches and follow the drinking game rules for those speeches. Last candidate to pass out wins.
• Old School Drink Them Under The Table: Easy. The candidates all sit around a table and start drinking shots. Rotate the shots so that all parts of America feel “connected with”. Bourbon, whiskey, vodka, jello shots, the whole gamut. Last candidate standing is the Rootenist Tootenist Connectitiest With Real Americans President 2008!!!

Hillary Prepares for Drink Off To The White House 2008

Think about it - no annoying advertising. No canvassers at your door during dinner. No stupid talking heads. Just the candidates being like “Real Americans” and drowning their pain in alcohol - for the good of our nation. And all we have to worry about is the alcohol lobby and undue influence from foreign spirits.

Thank you Roger Simon. You’ve transformed our electoral process.

Why you ask? I’ll tell you why. Because Barack Obama hates cats and cat owners.

That’s a harsh thing to say, I know. But he’s only just now done his first interview with national magazine Cat Fancy. He has yet to do an interview with ANY local cat-enthusiast press. The Charlotte Cat Lover? Nope. The Indianapolis Cat Times? Nope. The Philadelphia Cat Enthusiast? Not even after repeated attempts by their journalists to line up an interview. Oh sure, Obama has done “open letters’ to the cat loving community on a few cat-centric blogs and national cat press. But his snubbing of the local feline lover press is a slap in the face of cat lovers everywhere!

But this isn’t the only problem. Barack Obama has a long history of association with not only dog lovers, but cat haters. His former Sunday school teacher once said “I hate cats. They are lay about no good animals who do nothing but puke on your carpet and get their fur everywhere!” The early stages of his campaign saw association with an adviser who was an avowed cat hater.

Even when Obama tries to pretend like he loves cats and cat lovers, he belies his true intentions. Take this quote from his only (and recent) interview in Cat Fancy:

Let me tell you a story. When I was in college, I had this professor I loved. Belvedere Higgins. I think that was his name. Anyway, I found out through the course of my class with him that Mr. Higgins was a cat lover. This was amazing to me - here was a cat lover who wasn’t out there proselytizing his views. He just WAS a cat lover and was so comfortable with it.

Now, you may read that as Barack Obama having been raised and brought up in a culture where cat lovers were always seen as .. pushy about it, trying to convert you to their cat loving lifestyle. That it was a moment where he realized that, unlike the cultural perceptions he had been raised in, cat lovers were just like everyone else and deserved to be treated as such. But the cat loving community out there - we know what it really means. It really means that Barack Obama STILL THINKS that cat lovers are just overly pushy freaks who want to make every dog lover a cat lover and turn Fido into Wittle Fuzzy Wuzzy the cutest little kitty. To read anything more benign into that statement is to be a cat hater yourself.

Oh sure, Brack Obama SAYS he has no problem with cats. He SAYS that he wants cat lovers and dog lovers to be equal in the eyes of the government. He even supports fully repealing the Defense Of Man’s Best Friend Act. But whatever, those snubbed interviews say more than that. Busy schedule? Pah! A likely excuse.

Sure, Hillary doesn’t support a full roll back of the Defense Of Man’s Best Friend Act, only partial. But her interviews with local feline publications show her true dedication to the cat fanciers of America. She tells stories about her many friends who love cats. It’s really heartwarming. Some will say she is just pandering to the cat loving community in a final attempt to drive a wedge in Obama’s support and wrest the nomination from him. Whatever - we know Hillary really loves cats and Obama obviously hates them. Obviously. Really.

Stop looking at me like that.

From one of the linked articles in that post:

A study by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University shows turnout in 2004 was about 4% lower in states that required voters to sign their name or produce documentation. Hispanic turnout was 10% lower; the difference was about 6% for blacks and Asian-Americans.

The post goes on to quite Kevin Drum using some Indiana statistics in 2006 that highlight the fact that the people most likely (by an 8% margin) to have ID at the polls were Republicans - the white, high income, middle aged bread and butter of the GOP.

Fuck Todd Rokita. Fuck the Indiana GOP. Fuck the GOP nationally who uses the boogeyman of ‘voter fraud’ which just doesn’t happen (and certainly not on a scale to justify a program that suppresses turnout among registered law abiding voters), to supress the vote of their political enemies.

Jeebus Xenu, I’m pissed.

Apparently this ad (above) for HBO’s The Tudors implies that rape and strangulation of women is awesome. Oh, and the wine glass represents vaginal bleeding.

Really.

Alright. I guess I’ll have to do this in handy bullet form or otherwise I’ll start rambling.

• Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a goblet of wine is just a goblet of wine
• The poster is for a show called The Tudors and the characters in it are of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Of course there is violence implied. Henry VIII eventually has Anne Boleyn EXECUTED.
• If the issue is that there are some people that would find that image ’sexy’,fine.Those people are freaks and should be called out. But that doesn’t mean that the creators of that poster/show think it is sexy or fine or awesome. It means the show deals with violent themes, and that a teaser poster for the show depicts allusions to those violent themes in the context of a royal marriage. OH NOES! DEPICTING THINGS THAT HAPPEN!
• “What I find amazing is that none of the nearly hundred commenters at Feministing appear to have come to the same conclusion..” Maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe the nearly hundred commenters at Feministing understand the concept of context and that sometimes art reflects violent themes without putting a stamp of approval on those violent themes.
• Alright, so McEwan admits to not understanding the context at first. But then goes on to make the same arguments with the context not being used to explain them. Even IF the spilling goblet of wine represents lost (and forcibly taken) virginity, Henry VIII was obviously not a nice man and treated his women with violence and disrespect. The show is obviously going to reflect that. That’s not an endorsement. That’s dramatization of historical fact. Should they have remade Henry VIII to be a swell modern man? Should no teaser images for the show ever dare imply the innate terribleness of Henry VIII towards women?

To follow:

And, naturally, no thinly veiled rape imagery used to promote a TV show or film would be complete if it didn’t also portray the symbolic rape as totally hot.

Umm, I don’t know about you but I don’t find it totally hot at all. I don’t see it being depicted as totally hot. I don’t know why YOU see it as totally hot. I see it as a thinly veiled expression of Henry VIII’s treatment of Anne Boleyn and an allusion to his eventual execution of her.

That many women and men will look at that image and think it’s sexy, without ever considering the disturbing implications of that tipped goblet and spilling wine, no less his hands ominously poised to choke her and force apart her legs, exposes the profundity of the rape culture more certainly and shockingly than anything I write about the image ever could.

That many men and women will look at it and think it’s sexy says a lot about THOSE men and women. It also says a lot about YOU that whenever you see an image like this you assume that “many women and men” will think it is sexy. I sure as hell don’t. And given the context of the show this image is specifically for, I just don’t see how this applies.

In summary:

• Henry VIII was a violent bastard
• Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn after initial resistance from her meaning the wedding was probably against her will in some way anyway.
• Given that Henry VIII was a violent bastard and pursued and got women against their will, it can be deduced without much thought that Henry VIII was a violent bastard towards women
• The Tudors is in no small part about Henry VIII
• Naturally, The Tudors will include his violent bastardness towards women, specifically that he HAD ANNE BOLEYN EXECUTED.
• THEREFORE: A teaser poster for this show will reflect these themes. That does not mean the creators of, watchers of, nor anyone else who looks at this poster of the show condones the actions of Henry VIII nor the actions of anyone who thinks that rape is sexy.

I thought about dipping my toe into the comments on Shakespeare’s Sister, but on posts like this they usually end up as one of two flavors: “me too!!” or “I didn’t notice that at first but now that you pointed it out to me I am OUTRAGED!!!111!eleven!!1″. Anyone who points out things like context or the fact that sometimes, as I said before, a cigar is a cigar is ripped for being a misogynistic woman hating cretin.

But hey, this is the same feminist site that has Project Runway open threads, for a tv reality show about an industry that is one of the most degrading of women on the planet. So maybe I don’t understand context afterall?

*By ‘giant’, I don’t mean a slur against large women, I mean that your site is large and well trafficked**
**By ‘large and well trafficked’ I don’t mean you are a big slut. Please. I’m just trying to construct an honest to Xenu simple sentence here!
Update: Alright I REALLY, SWEAR I didn’t mean that to be an attack of any sort. It was one of those cases where my love of pun/play on word based humor trumped thought and I sort of rationalized it as a play off of how these sorts of debatuments (debate + argument) usually play out, with insult and no actual debate. Anyone who knows me knows that I really truly am not that sort. But looking at it a third time (and with anxiety-ridden eyes) I can see how that can be taken in another way. I am Jason’s stupid humor that doesn’t think before making a joke sometimes. usually it’s harmless and pun based, sometimes it’s not.